


artistic licence

by beardsley



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-23 19:25:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardsley/pseuds/beardsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Music is in the soul (or is it?), the push and throb that claws its way from Anthy's lungs and out her throat.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	artistic licence

**Author's Note:**

> written for gloss in the [multifandom AU drabble meme](http://wehappyfew.dreamwidth.org/37888.html?thread=109824).
> 
>  **warning** for drug addiction and general messed up, but nothing more graphic than the series itself.

Music is in the soul (or is it?), the push and throb that claws its way from Anthy's lungs and out her throat. It's the roar of blood in her ears, a low growl, when she screams the words that make sense to her only if she closes her eyes and doesn't think too hard, doesn't question it. Music is in the soul, and Anthy's soul is hungry.

She's the most polite girl you'll meet, eyes downcast and mouth stretched in a thin smile that isn't a smile at all, so meek you will pass her by and won't notice she stabbed you between the ribs right until you're bleeding out in an alley, wondering why and how and what.

(Is that experience talking? Anthy wouldn't know. Has she killed someone in her life, or is that just artistic licence? Maybe she knows what it feels like to slide a knife into another's flesh, what it feels like when blood is oozing over her fingers, hot and dark. Maybe she doesn't. She's probably making that up, girls like her do that all the time. Don't they? She's a poet: she breathes lies.)

Her soul is hungry for what, she doesn't know, and doesn't care; her brother, her only brother, will whisper into her ear to calm the raging storm that leaves her shaking in the bathroom stall after a concert, puking her guts out. She's hungry; he'll give her what she needs. She's hungry enough that she doesn't even feel the needle sliding into her arm, into the soft skin on the inside of her elbow. By the time she notices, it's too late: the world removes itself by a magnitude of a step or two. Anthy's throat is parched, so it's just a soft rasp that escapes her mouth when she wants to call her brother.

(What's her brother's name? She wouldn't know. Does she remember growing up with a sibling, playing and letting him play with her like a small meek vacant-eyed doll, or is that just artistic licence? Maybe she knows what it feels like to have her heart ripped out and the empty place inside her chest stuffed with glass wool, scratching from the other side of her ribs. Maybe she doesn't. She's probably making the brother up, when it's her own hand that holds the needle.)

It's a bouncer that helps her out of the bathroom, and isn't it lucky that the dive Anthy's band plays at can afford a bouncer? The man avoids looking her in the eye, and Anthy knows — a step or two removed, but she knows — that he's feeling her up, just a little. Nothing more than his hand curled possessively around her hip; maybe he's too disgusted to do more, with Anthy's dirty shirt and bloodshot eyes and clammy skin. Maybe he's afraid he'll catch whatever it is she has.

People are afraid of her, those who do notice her at all. She makes people uncomfortable, she takes them by surprise. She's the girl in the subway sitting with her feet on the seat and her forehead on her knees, she's the girl sleeping at the back of the car with a guitar case for a pillow. In the summer, she's the girl who can't be bothered to hide the insides of her elbows under long sleeves. In the winter, she sleeps.

~

Music is in the soul, but Anthy doesn't think she has one.

The next time — there is always a next time — someone puts a hand over the back of Anthy's neck. Someone holds her hair back when she's throwing up. Her brother, her only brother, never does that: he only gives her what she needs.

When Anthy looks up, it's not her brother and it's not the bouncer, or any of the men who sometimes help her up, all of them smelling like stale beer and sweat. It's a girl no older than Anthy, who looks at her like she's a forest fire or the last of a failed revolution, scraped out of a cracked jar.

She asks Anthy a question; Anthy answers, though she's not sure any words make it out of her mouth.

The girl, whose name speaks to Anthy of white roses and all the chances she won't ever have in this life, takes Anthy home. Not Anthy's, because like a soul Anthy isn't sure she has anything by way of a home. There must be a place she goes to, there must be a place she eats and sleeps at, a place she spends winters wrapped in woollen dresses and velvet moths.

The girl, whose bright hair is soft under Anthy's fingers, makes Anthy want to feel. She might have been able to feel, once, but she doesn't remember. Maybe she's making that up, though. It's what she does.

The girl is called Utena, and she brings redemption. She is the revolution Anthy could never go alone, and she is the push that claws its way out of Anthy's throat, and with a certainty borne of failure Anthy knows she only exists in her mind. There could never be a girl like Utena; no girl could ever care so much, not about Anthy.

Anthy isn't a girl people care about, even those who notice her, even those she doesn't frighten.

(Has anyone cared about her? Anthy wouldn't know. If she had someone who knew her name, wouldn't she have kept them? Maybe she knows what it feels like to slide her tongue along the inside of someone's thighs, kneel over another girl and cup her breasts in her hands and kiss her, and want to be kissed in return. Maybe she doesn't. She's probably making that up.)

She's a poet: she lies. She's a liar.

She wants to lie to herself.

~

Utena gives her a soul, and Anthy can sing the way she never could before. It doesn't feel like she's dying with every shouted word, and it doesn't feel like the stage lights blind her. She still shakes in bathroom stalls, afterwards, and no matter how hard Utena tries it's not her who has the power to stand up to Anthy's brother, her only brother, and say: 'No.'

But still Anthy takes what she can; she takes the days when people turn their heads on the subway, because there's a girl sleeping at the back of the car with her head resting in the lap of another. She takes the days when Utena yells at her to stop killing herself, and when she replies that it's all she knows how to do; she's been alive for so long, she just wants to be allowed to rest.

She takes the nights when Utena catches her wrists and pins them over Anthy's head, and it makes Anthy moan out loud, which in turn makes Utena press closer, the slide of skin on skin hot enough that Anthy thinks even someone like her might be able to get warm. She takes the nights when Utena stops whatever it is she's doing, and looks up at Anthy, and frowns and asks: 'Where did you go?' Nowhere; everywhere; inside her own head. Anthy, for all that she's a poet and poets breathe lies, never has the words to answer that one. She takes the nights when it's sweet, almost too much to bear.

She doesn't want to take the nights when the music is too loud.

They walk into the clinic hand in hand; the receptionist looks first at Anthy, and then at Utena. And something in Anthy breaks, the first whispers of salvation, because it means Utena Tenjou is real. Real people see her; she must be real.

(Must she? Anthy wouldn't know. Has she ever understood how the real world works? Maybe she knows that everything is only as real as she lets it become. Maybe she doesn't.)

~

Don't take her word on any of this. She is a poet, after all: she lies.


End file.
